Playmaker adds to digital sports portfolio with Yardbarker acquisition
Canada-based media company lands sports and entertainment property in deal worth up to $24m
Playmaker Capital Inc. has acquired digital media property Yardbarker as part of its efforts to expand its presence in the US.
Playmaker, a Canada-based sports media and affiliate company, will add Yardbarker to a portfolio of brands that collectively reach more than 70 million unique users per month at the intersection of sports, gambling, media, and technology.
The deal, which includes $10m cash and the issuance of $8m of Playmaker common shares upon closing, could be worth up to $24m within two years contingent on certain EBITDA benchmarks being met.
In return, Playmaker gains ownership of a high-volume and high-reach sports and entertainment media platform in Yardbarker.
Co-founded in 2006 by CEO Ben Maggin, Jeff Kloster, and Mark Johns, Yardbarker covers all of the major US professional and college sports, and publishes more than 25,000 full-text articles per month through a combination of its in-house editorial team and 125+ content syndication partner sites.
“We are delighted to welcome Yardbarker to the Playmaker family,” said founder and CEO Jordan Gnat. “Ben, Jeff, and Mark have built a great business with incredibly loyal fans.
“Playmaker will be able to leverage Yardbarker’s content of all the key North American sports within our current Futbol Sites’ assets and vice versa. This is how we will build our ecosystem.”
In addition to boasting over four million unique users per month and generating over nine million total sessions per month, Yardbarker also produces a daily email newsletter, The Morning Bark.
The newsletter provides a top 10 rundown of the biggest stories of the day to its 350,000 subscribers, serving as both a driver of traffic to the Yardbarker website as well as a low-cost acquisition tool that Playmaker will now be able to leverage.
“We believe that Playmaker is in the process of building the next great collection of digital sports assets and we couldn’t be more excited to be joining at this early stage,” said Maggin.